Biodynamic Structures is a two-week design workshop cotaught by the Emtech faculty at the AA and the Architecture faculty and MEDIAlab at California College of the Arts, exploring active and passive systems in architectural design that respond to changing environmental and spatial needs.

Students work in teams to research specific biological systems, extracting logics of organization, geometry, structure, and mathematics. Associative modelling, simulation, and digital fabrication tools are introduced in order to apply this information to the design of both passive and active responsive architectural systems.

The workshop explores theoretical concepts of emergence and self-organization in complex biological systems, and their technical application via material systems in the built environment. Form-generation, material organization, and performance with respect to environmental, spatial, and social constraints are approached as three interrelated methods of inquiry in the investigation of an integral parametric and algorithmic design framework. These tools and concepts introduce an approach to architectural design dependent on bottom-up interactions in order to generate complex design solutions.